Madbean Collosalus- MXR Flanger 117

Guardians of the analog

Guardians of the analog

Papi Fuego
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
Here's a blast from the past. I started this project in 2019 but never finished it. I had built this prior but sort of dismissed it as just the EVH flanger. I got rid of that build and this one sat unfinished all this time. That was wrong of me to dismiss this circuit. I'm glad I revisited this and finished it. With a little help from @Scruffie I addressed the one nagging issue that has plagued this circuit forever.

This is the 2015 layout that @bean had with the charge pump. His newer layout omits this in favor of an 18v power tap. I have no noise issues and love that I can just use a 9v tap. The build with typical fashion of Brian's layouts of complex circuits is very easy. The calibration is also simple. The clock frequency cap I ended up going with 33pf and have a frequency range of 35khz-1.2mhz. the only other issue was the slight volume drop the effect has. Scruffie gave me some guidance to change some values in the wet/dry mixing stage to fix that. Now there is no volume drop when I kick it on.

How does it sound? Warm, chewy, liquid, organic, musical and all that dumb stuff 😂. Its sonically somewhere between the BF-2 and the Electric Mistress. It's very warm and musical even on more extreme settings. It does a good chorus sound as well. Very intuitive to use and doesn't take over the signal unless you dial it in to. Fantastic sounding all around.

As with my anti-tarrif trash can series, I went with no film on a bare enclosure. Also a @dan.schumaker relay bypass with the code flashed by @Paradox916. It takes a village to build a pedal. Thanks also to @blackhatboojum for going over the frequency response.
Madbean and Schu tone both a projects for this so build one if you haven't, even if you like EVH 🤦🤣.
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Nice! I've also been working on a long-dormant Collosalus 2015 recently but it doesn't want to flange. This is inspiration for me to get back to the troubleshooting (not trying to hijack a build report thread)
 
As usual, @Guardians of the analog got me revisiting the Colosallus. I built it years ago and put it on the shelf. (No good reason, I always liked it).
But with the low output fix that Chris shared with me I've been running mine in the effects loop and have fallen in love with it.
Mainly because it works so well with gain or fuzz. It doesn't overwhelm the main signal and can be dialed it sit in the background.
And it doesn't add a ton of treble like the Mistress.
 
MichaelW said:
But with the low output fix that Chris shared with me I've been running mine in the effects loop and have fallen in love with it.
Click to expand...
You make it sound so secret!

And it is, if any one uses these new values, I'll have to torture Guardians with the soft cushions and the comfy chair.

Just reduce R8 & 27 equally to keep the mix/feedback levels right so R8 would become 100k and R27 54k6 but you can probably get away with 56k though, might even give you a little extra feedback at 50/50 mix on the gain trim without going in to oscillation.
 
Scruffie said:
You make it sound so secret!

And it is, if any one uses these new values, I'll have to torture Guardians with the soft cushions and the comfy chair.

Just reduce R8 & 27 equally to keep the mix/feedback levels right so R8 would become 100k and R27 54k6 but you can probably get away with 56k though, might even give you a little extra feedback at 50/50 mix on the gain trim without going in to oscillation.
Click to expand...
Just for the record, the "fix" came from Mr. @Scruffie himself.
 
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